


A Fresh Start

by Fuzziestpuppy



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, Feral!Ajay, Fluff and Smut, Frottage, Grief/Mourning, Hand Licking, M/M, One Shot, Outdoor Sex, Play Fighting, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 06:02:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18685579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy
Summary: Ajay took in the scene laid out before him: people dressed like Sabal in blue and yellow, fighting with Pagan’s army guys.  Gunshots and explosions and screams, Sabal yelling encouragement from behind.He took one look…and turned and bolted up the hill and into the trees.





	A Fresh Start

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, [brokibrodinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokibrodinson/pseuds/brokibrodinson), [BunnyMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/pseuds/BunnyMoss), for being such wonderful beta readers. You guys really are the best.

***

 

When Ajay Ghale woke on the morning of November the fourteenth in the cheapest hotel room he could find in Patna, he could never have anticipated how that agonizingly long day would end.

The little he had read about Kyrat had strongly urged him to hire a guide, and so he did, from a notice at the hotel bar. Sketchy for sure, but he hadn’t been able to figure out a better way before he had arrived. The man seemed all right though; older guy named Darpan, solid and unexcitable, spoke pretty good English. He had explained how they’d take the bus through the border crossing, that it shouldn’t be a big deal. The bus would stop and they’d check everybody’s passports and then wave them through, easy. A couple hundred rupees folded into Ajay’s American passport would ensure things went smoothly.

Of course, things did not go smoothly.

The ride itself was fairly uneventful, if loud and crowded with chickens in cages and some lady’s pet monkey and two guys in the back in matching denim vests that looked as if they were on high alert for some reason. A little anxious about something. Ajay observed them out of the corner of his eye, just in case. He tried to look out the window at one point, since the views were _gorgeous,_ like something from a dream…but as they traveled higher into the mountains the edge of the roadway disappeared under the bus windows. It looked a bit as if the whole thing was going to slide off at any second, and once he swore that he felt the wheels hit that eroded edge. He gulped, a little nauseous, and turned back to look at Darpan, to watch those two guys.

The shooting started not long after that. Ajay wished that the driver had _really_ stopped and thought that out better, pulling an old revolver on a bunch of guys with assault rifles. The two fuckers in the back had just bolted out the emergency door, drawing the guard’s fire. Maybe they had assumed that he was with them, because one pointed and yelled and they fired at him instead, one bullet close enough that he felt the wind from it as it buzzed by his ear like a fat, enraged hornet. He dropped to the floor and Darpan shoved him towards the emergency hatch, both of them tumbling out into the mud…right into rifles aimed at his face.

The percussive thump of the big helicopter’s blades had been immense in his abused eardrums. This country seemed determined to destroy his hearing before he even turned thirty, as a soldier kept screaming at him to get on the ground. He’d never been _off_ the ground, and in any case it hadn’t exactly been difficult to figure out what they wanted, even before they switched from Kyrati to English. He’d stayed nice and flat and eventually they shut the hell up and the pilot had cut the engine on the Blackhawk, but not before a few notes from that one Clash song had drifted out over the sound of the rotor winding down.

Ajay blinked.

Finally, finally, silence for a beat or two. The door rolled open. A guy stepped out, dropping easily to the ground. Now this guy…he wouldn’t have earned a second glance in LA, but this certainly wasn’t fucking LA, oh no. Here he stood out like a sore thumb, an apparition in mascara and the shiniest shoes Ajay had ever seen.

In hindsight, he should have been more shocked when the blond dude in the nice purple trousers pulled out a pen and went to town on that soldier, blood flying…but nothing could have really surprised him at that point. He’d merely watched, tense and wary, and thought about how long he might have to live after Blondie came at him with that pen, because he sure as shit wasn’t going to be like that soldier and just _stand_ there. He’d fight, and they’d fire, and that would be the end of it…but he’d still fight. He bared his teeth a little, but if he were being honest it didn’t really feel like he was in any actual danger, not down deep in his gut. Couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but what Blond Guy seemed seriously pissed about was that the bus had gotten shot at. That they had shot at _him._

No, what was surprising was the way his eyes had widened when they met his own, widened and then went warm and sunny. His hands, clad in fine leather gloves coated with mud and blood had hauled him up…and then right into his arms. That had been the shocking part, not people fucking dying, and what did that say about him? He couldn’t even remember the last time someone hugged him, touched him affectionately that wasn’t Mom. This guy who seemed to know him already…know him and _like_ him. It had created just the tiniest answering warmth in him, just a spark.

The moment was lost when someone jammed a bag over his head from behind. _That_ had him baring his teeth again, hadn’t liked that at all, having his vision and half his air cut off like that. That little spark died like it had never been, but at least they didn’t tie his hands, unlike Darpan. He could pull it off. As he felt around his neck to see how the bag was secured, that warm voice spoke nearly in his ear, pitched just above the rotor noise.

“Please, my boy, leave it on. It’s…merely a precaution. That entire bus was full of Golden Path terrorists, a ruse to try to steal you away without my knowing. How naughty of them!” A body pressed itself against his side, warm and solid, thigh against his. A hand touched his knee and he jerked, then relaxed a bit into that contact. He could feel the heat of that hand, bare now, if he had to guess, warm even through the thick fabric of his jeans. “Please,” the man said again, and it was the courtesy of asking that kept his hands still, kept him from ripping the bag off and trying to bolt. Nowhere to bolt _to,_ in a helicopter, and that thought had him shivering all over, his skin twitching. The man pressed himself a little closer and Ajay let him, as his thumb rubbed a circle into his leg. A stability that he let himself lean against.

That little spark was back, a tiny glowing coal in his chest.

Back firmly on the ground, he was much more all right with the bag situation. They let him walk with only a hand on his elbow to steady him, not restraining him at all. Then cool shadow replaced hot sunlight, a flight of stairs, the creak of aged wood under his feet and the smell of incense and the seat of a chair against the backs of his knees. In all, they only made him wear it for a half-hour or so. Just long enough for the light to be blinding when someone dragged it off his head. 

“So, fresh start,” the man, Pagan now, assured him. He had traded his filthy wool coat for a jacket so shimmeringly pink it was a little startling.

“That’s you,” he whispered, to the little portraits on the bills held out to him. King Min, who turned out to have loved his mother. But he didn’t know what he meant, about not being sure of who he was anymore.

The guy named Paul grabbed his arm when he objected to Pagan picking up Mom’s urn, but he was only afraid he was going to dump it out right then and there, scatter her ashes to the winds that gusted intermittently through the open balcony and set the bells to tinkling. As it turned out he just wanted to…taste them, but he didn’t really give a shit about that, as long as he was careful with the urn. And he was, the vessel safe in his big but elegant hands, and he was able to relax back into his seat.

Somebody was lying to him here, either Pagan or this guy Darpan as he stared him down, his eyes narrowing.

Almost as if he could read Ajay’s thoughts, Pagan got up and promptly stuck a fork in him and slapped the dude’s phone out of his hand like you would with a toddler, which would _almost_ be funny in a sick kind of way…until he held the phone up for a second so he could see. He peered closely at the screen and saw a string of messages from someone named Sabal, but before he could see more Pagan pulled it back and read the last one out loud.

“I’m with Ajay Ghale, help,” and something about that put the wind straight up his back, the short hairs at the nape of his neck standing at attention. Something was obviously going on, but the tinge of cruelty he could hear in Pagan’s voice wasn’t helping those hairs lay flat by any means. And neither was Darpan’s pitiful whimpering. Ajay figured he’d be made of sterner stuff, if he were some kind of terrorist mastermind. It was only a fork, after all. Pagan hadn’t even hit him or anything, just twisted it a little. Hell, it was barely bleeding. A kid he’d once gotten into a fight with had nailed him with a boxcutter, had nearly sliced his arm to the bone. Over forty stitches to close it up…a fucking fork was _nothing._ Pagan flung it back onto the table in some weird kind of cheerful disgust. Before he knew it, his men were hauling Darpan off and Pagan was on his own phone, striding away and he was left completely by himself.

Breathing with relief at the quiet and with the urn tucked safely back into his jacket, he looked out at the breathtaking vista, those _mountains._ If things could just…stay still, still and quiet for just a little while, then maybe he…

Screams, from somewhere else in the building.

“What the fuck,” he muttered, suddenly tired to his very bones. His head ached.

Ignoring Pagan’s instructions to stay put, he slowly wandered downstairs, looking at things. No way he could eat anything right now, not with somebody screaming like that. He wondered why such a relentlessly American guy named Paul would choose to live in what looked like a Kyrati temple, with the incense billowing and the lamps lit around statues. But on what looked like an altar to his untrained eye sat pictures of his kid, and letters from home, and most inexplicably of all, a copy of a Dr. Phil self-help book. The longer he spent in this place, the more surreal it all seemed. Like a bizarre dream. Maybe it was all the fucking incense.

The screaming was coming from behind the downstairs door, and he pushed it open slowly, quietly.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered, at the sight of Paul shocking the bejesus out of a screeching Darpan, pumping him for intel.

“What does the Golden Path want with Ajay Ghale?” Paul said conversationally, and while he really, _really_ wanted to know that little factoid himself…he also needed to just, get outside and get a breath of fresh air.

The next door he opened had a pistol behind it.

Aimed right at his face, the bore looked huge in the low light, like the maw of a living thing. So far beyond fear it wasn’t even funny, he almost slapped it out of the way in his irritation.

Sabal. _Sabal,_ the guy that Darpan had been texting. His pained screams still filled the room behind them. He was pretty sure that he wasn’t the one who needed rescuing; after all, he wasn’t the one strapped to a metal rack getting the shit shocked out of him.

“You are our priority,” Sabal said, without any emotion in his handsome face, and it became clear that he meant to leave their guy behind. He hesitated for a moment, just a moment of not moving forward with him, and Sabal’s face hardened. Rather than be dragged along and spotting daylight behind Sabal’s shoulder from the open door, he went along with the guy just for the moment…and then the alarm started to blare with a harsh blatting sound that was loud enough to shake his brain in his skull. God.

Once out in the open air, instead of racing for the vehicle as instructed, his feet skidded to a stop of their own volition. He took in the scene laid out before him: people dressed like Sabal in blue and yellow, fighting with Pagan’s army guys. Gunshots and explosions and screams, Sabal yelling encouragement from behind. He took one look…and turned and bolted up the hill and into the trees.

He had always been a good, fast runner, had ran cross-country in school, and there was no way anybody could catch him as he darted through the undergrowth, as he ran until the gunshots were faint. As he stopped to catch his breath in a little clearing, they ceased entirely. Good. He shucked off his jacket, carefully setting Mom’s urn down in a nest of leaves; though it was mid-November and had been snowing up at the border crossing, down here the day was warm, nearly hot.

He laid down under a bush at the edge of the clearing, his hand on the smooth hard curve of the urn. Unless someone actually stepped on him, he was virtually invisible under here in the cooler shade. He wasn’t sure what it was he was going to do, exactly…but he sure as shit knew it didn’t involve getting embroiled in someone else’s war. Right here, right now, it was quiet, only the soughing of the wind in the leaves, the call of some bird he didn’t know. A place where he could think, his other arm curled under his head as he watched the sky through the leaves, as the clouds scudded across an achingly blue expanse. A place where he had a chance to string two thoughts together without getting shot at and seeing people get stabbed to death with pens and watching how that Sabal guy had just…left Darpan behind. That, way more than the gunfire, had convinced him not to stick around. They might have lied, might have set him up for some reason he still didn’t really understand and that was one thing…but they had left Darpan to his fate, the fucks. Sabal had mentioned his dad, but he already knew everything he needed to know about him: that he’d died a long time ago. That’s what Mom had told him. After all that bullshit, he’d never trust another word out of any of their mouths.

Pagan he wasn’t sure about.

After that, his thoughts grew slower and more disjointed, and he even dozed for a while there in his safe thicket. He woke sometime later with the light beginning to slant towards afternoon and with his head feeling much better. He was stretching luxuriantly when a twig snapped across the clearing, and he froze. Slowly and carefully, he craned his head to look.

There was Pagan, strolling along through this forest like he didn’t have a care in the world, looking down at the ground occasionally. He hadn’t been careful about the scuffs he had left in the leaves and bare dirt. Pagan’s feet were shoved down into a pair of unlaced army boots, which made sense. It would suck to slide on a hill and bust your ass in slippery dress shoes. In his shirtsleeves in deference to the heat and with his sleeves rolled up and hands in his pockets, he looked much more approachable. More human. Much less like a drug kingpin on _Miami Vice,_ without that fucking tacky silk jacket. He even whistled a little, almost under his breath. He stopped in the middle of the clearing, correctly deducing that his tracks went no further.

“My boy, are you out here,” he said quietly to the air around him.

“…yeah,” he said, equally quietly.

“Good. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve followed you.” Pagan peered around, trying to spot him, but quickly seemed to realize the futility of it. “ _Do_ you mind? I can go away if you’d prefer.”

“No, stay.” He didn’t know why he said it, just that…Pagan was the one person he knew even a little in this fucking crazy country, if you didn’t count Darpan, and he was being very quiet and moving slowly and seemed to sense that he felt rubbed raw by this extraordinarily weird and fairly awful day. Pagan nodded and brushed the dirt off a fallen log and sat down.

“Look, no hard feelings about the crab Rangoon, I know it’s not to everyone’s tastes,” he said brightly. “But you’ll be pleased to know that I had the chef executed for his incompetence…or was it his family we killed? Regardless…” He trails off. “Sorry, that was a bad joke. Too dark for the circumstances, I think. You’ve had a trying day.” He rubbed his hands together slowly. “I…perhaps overreacted there, by the bus. But my men had explicit orders to stop that very bus and pull you off, just you, like it was all routine and to not alarm anyone…and look at what they did! They could have _killed_ you,” he hissed, working himself into a rage about it all over again.

“But they didn’t.” He leaned back and laced his hands under his head, watching the clouds again.

“No, I suppose you’re right,” Pagan said after a time, quiet again. “No harm came of it…except that they frightened you. _I_ frightened you.” He sighed.

“No, not really.” And that was true. He had felt tense and wary and twisted in knots, and like the world was screaming at him from a hundred different directions, but he hadn’t been afraid. “I knew deep down that you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“That will always be true, my boy, always and always.”

They sat there in silence together for a while.

“The really terrible joke is that I’m alive, and your mother is not,” Pagan said, more or less addressing the sky. “All these years of all these motherfuckers gunning for me, the Golden Path, hell, the CIA, and yet…here I am and she’s over there in a, in a _vase,_ and…” He cleared his throat roughly, angrily. “I’m terribly sorry if I disturbed you with that as well.”

“You mean tasting her ashes?” At Pagan’s nod: “Nah. I mean, I kind of get it, I think. Like wanting to be close to her or something. Maybe it’s like that line from that poem…a taste of old times sets all to rights.” He craned his head a little more, watching him. “Did it make you feel any better?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it did. I’ve done my best to make my peace, over the years.”

Another long, not quite awkward silence, in which Ajay weighed what he wanted to say.  What he wanted to happen.

“It’s probably hot out there, in the sun,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Do you want to come over here? Get in the shade?” He reached up and grasped a branch and shook it a little, so Pagan could see where he was.

A crunch of twigs, a scuff of his untied boot, and there he was, looking down at Ajay through the screen of green leaves.

“There you are,” Pagan whispered, that sunny look in his dark eyes again, a little smile…and Ajay found himself smiling back. That smile turned to a little mischievous crinkling of his eyes as he got down and crawled into the shrubbery, as if they were playing some kind of ridiculous game, and Ajay laughed for the first time that day. Pagan laid down beside him and wriggled his back into the leaves, making them into a shape that would fit him.

“You know,” he said, bemused, “this is surprisingly nice. Comfortable. What exactly were you doing under here though? Besides hiding, perhaps.”

“Just watching the clouds go by. Finally quiet. I can think in here.”

“Ah, I see.” Pagan tilted his head and followed his gaze though the leaves. “I think that I don’t get out into the country enough. This is a lovely spot.”

There were so many questions that Ajay wanted to ask him, _needed_ to ask him…but there was also a peace there that he didn’t want to break. He kind of got the impression that the King of Kyrat wasn’t the sort of guy to be crawling around in shrubs to hang out with just anyone…but Pagan felt it too, that peace. He could tell. When he looked over, Pagan’s eyes were closed, the greenish light dappled across his face and those lines of strain, of anger had eased. This close, he could hear his deep, steady breaths. He might have even been asleep himself, or near it.

“You would never have come back on your own, would you,” Pagan said suddenly, without opening his eyes. It didn’t really sound like a question. “If she hadn’t asked.”

Ajay crinkled a leaf between his fingers, breathed out. “No, probably not.”

“Well. You’re here now, and that’s what matters.” Pagan’s eyes were still closed, face still tipped up to the sky. “And I’ll take you to…to Lakshmana. I’ll tell you everything, dear boy, everything your mother wanted me to. Just…not today, please. Let’s have just this one day before we get into all of that old shit. And I’ll understand completely if you don’t want to stay beyond that, especially after the shitty incidents of this morning. I won’t like it, but I won’t ask it of you.” He chuckled. “If I’m being honest, I had just assumed that you would, and that I could order you to stay over any objections on your part…but I see now how foolish of an idea that was. You’d spit in my eye and skewer me the first time I gave you the opportunity. No sugar on your shit sandwich, oh no,” and his smile was pleased and almost proud, as Pagan turned his head and fixed him with that warm dark gaze. “But I hope you’ll consider it. Staying, not stabbing, that is.”

Lying next to each other in the leaves, Ajay realized that their hands were nearly touching, and before he could decide what he thought of that, of all of it, Pagan reached…and gently entwined their fingers. His heart beat just a little faster.

What in the actual fuck.

“This is fucked up, you know,” he said, fixing Pagan with his own gaze.

“ _Is_ it? Well, you’re probably right,” he said, letting go and moving his hand to his stomach. “This place has a way of changing one’s metric of what’s fucked up and what isn’t.”

Ajay swallowed. “I didn’t say that I…didn’t like it. I was just noting how fucked up it is. How fucked up everything is.” He touched the back of Pagan’s freckled hand, his thumb brushing against the softness of his shirt. He could feel the heat from his skin right through the silk. “I know how much I look like her, but I’m not. I can’t _be_ her. And you know that.”

“Oh Ajay,” Pagan chuckled, rolling over to face him. He reached and brushed his knuckles along his cheek. “You are absolutely _nothing_ like her, beyond outward appearances. You…you’re like some wild thing, some savage creature that will evaporate right out of my hands if I’m not careful.” Pagan looked him up and down, a little dip of his absurd eyelashes. He had a leaf caught in his hair. “And I would be careful, oh so careful with you,” he murmured softly, intimately.

And then seemed to think better of it.

“Jesus Christ boy, forgive me,” Pagan sputtered, backing away. “Of all the stupid…” He made as if to roll away and get up, but he didn’t make it far before Ajay pounced on him. Not even thinking about it, his body half over his as he pinned one arm to the ground…and Pagan came alive under him.

They wrestled together there under the trees as they grinned at each other, like playful animals, like some kind of weird mating ritual. One that Ajay decided he was determined to win, the leaves crackling and fragrant under them. He found that they were evenly matched; Pagan was a little stronger, a little heavier, but he was quicker as they shoved and strove together and he didn’t even know why. Maybe just to feel the smooth shift and play of muscle under his hands, to feel another body warm and alive and _strong_ against his, as he suddenly wanted to see him, all of him, see that lithe muscle bunch under his skin.

Pagan got a leg between his and flipped them and he couldn’t help it, he arched up into his hard thigh and Pagan sucked in a breath that he could feel under his hands where they were spread over his chest, and maybe _that_ was winning, hearing him make that sound that went straight to his cock. This was crazy, and beyond that it was _stupid,_ like Pagan had said but it didn’t matter. In that little thicket, all of a sudden it didn’t matter at all, as Pagan smirked down at him like _he’d_ won, cocky little smile, and Ajay twisted under him and shoved and toppled him over. Had him flat on his back and held down by his grip on his shoulders and Pagan _laughed,_ rich and rolling.

“It seems that you’ve bested me, boy,” Pagan said, not even making a token attempt to get away, breathing a little heavily. Seemed perfectly content to have Ajay sitting on him. “What will you do now, hmm?”

Straddling his stomach, Ajay gazed down into his face. He couldn’t decide if he was good-looking or not, but the sparkle in his eyes and his little lopsided grin and the flush across his cheekbones went a long way towards making him that way. A little challenge there. _What will you do now?_

When Ajay leaned down and brushed their mouths together just to see how it would feel, Pagan sucked in another of those deep breaths and slid his hands up Ajay’s thighs, his sides, whatever he could reach. What it felt like was some kind of sharp jolt that shot through him way down low, jolted and then fluttered warmly. The sheer intensity of it had them pulling apart a little, both of them breathing heavily.

“What are we _doing,_ ” Ajay whispered nearly against his mouth, bent over him.

“I don’t know. Oh, I really don’t know,” Pagan muttered, and this time it was Pagan pressing his lips to his, soft and sweet but not open-mouthed, not yet. A getting-to-know-you kind of kiss, the kind that you could back away from…or you could deepen just as easily. But even that small contact felt like it was stoking flame in him.

Fuck it. As soon as Ajay grazed his bottom lip with his tongue, Pagan made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a gasp as he ran his hands up under the edge of his t-shirt. He met his tongue with his own and it was his turn to gasp even though Pagan was a little clumsy, like this was something he hadn’t done in a long time. Between that and the way Pagan seemed determined to keep it tender and easy, the way he kept reining himself back in his eagerness, like he _cared_ …that was way sexier than if he’d just plundered his mouth. His hands felt like they covered a great deal of his torso, seemingly everywhere at once, so warm and with the slightest rasp of callused palms.

Gun calluses. A killer’s hands, running so gently over his skin.

He could also feel those hands trembling as they learned him, skating over the tender skin of his ribs, long fingers tracing the divot of his spine to the downy expanse of his lower back. Ajay had to hold back himself, as he twisted his hands into his shirt to keep from from just ripping it off him as he tried not to shove himself into Pagan’s hands in desperation. Made himself undo the buttons carefully, willed his hands not to shake. That first slide of his hands on his bare torso had Pagan squeezing his eyes shut with an unidentifiable sound, the satiny skin of his belly heaving under his fingers.

Both of them starved for touch, for any comfort at all. In mourning for the same woman.

But he was still alive and so was Pagan, alive and wanting and _needing,_ oh god, and as he shifted he could feel Pagan hard under him, could feel his heat even through layers of clothing. Pagan gripped his biceps to steady him as he rolled over underneath him.

“Here, like this, yes…that’s it,” Pagan murmured, as he eased them over to lie on their sides as he tucked his arm under Ajay’s head. Ajay got his other arm around his shoulders as they both shifted around awkwardly, as they tried to get somewhat comfortable to do this. Ajay swallowed hard at the thought of _this_ as Pagan ran his free hand down to cup him gently through his jeans, watching his face. When he didn’t say anything, or press up into it, he pulled his hand away.

“No, that’s not _stop,_ I…” Frustrated with words, he grabbed Pagan’s hand and licked up the center of his palm, and Pagan shivered against him. So he did it again, and again, savoring the taste of clean sweat and a tiny hint of soap. He laved his palm wetly with his tongue, rasping gently over the rougher spots, lapping at the softness between his fingers. Pagan watched him intently, mesmerized, and Ajay watched him watching. He wanted to close his own eyes, the better to concentrate on that velvety-feeling space between his fingers and how his tongue fit _just so,_ but it was too good to watch the clear brown of Pagan’s eyes grow darker, pupils dilating. And oh, he _liked_ that, liked to see his arousal, liked to feel his breathing pick up in response.

All thoughts of the fact that Pagan had killed a man with that same hand not five hours ago flew right out of his head. Unable to stand it anymore, he let go with a last little lick and worked his own belt open, shoved jeans and boxers down as far as he could get them, and trembled all over as he guided Pagan’s hand down. At that first slide of wet warmth his head snapped back, he couldn’t help it. Pagan took that opportunity to nuzzle into the tender skin of his throat, to place little sucking kisses there as he stroked liquid pleasure into his skin.

“Yeah. Yeah, like that, ‘s good,” he mumbled while his big hand just engulfed him, caressed him slow and gentle. Ajay wasn’t sure why he was expecting rough and maybe a little indifferent, but he was as considerate in this as he was in any of the rest of it.

 _I’d be so careful with you._ Well, he’d hardly break, but this was _fantastic_. That melting heat made it hard to even keep his eyes open enough to look down and get Pagan’s belt undone, and the sight of his hand moving on him…god. He tucked his head against Pagan’s, their foreheads pressed together as he managed to find the catch inside his fancy trousers and push them down, his cock springing free at last. He hadn’t been quite sure what to expect, but they were nearly the same size. He fit into his hand perfectly, so warm and already leaking, fit like he was made to, and the way that Pagan groaned…

“Closer,” Pagan ground out, and he hooked his leg over Ajay’s hip to pull him in, shifting around and he understood what he was trying to do, oh god. He helped line them up and then they were sliding hotly against each other, and Pagan got his hand wrapped around the both of them together and his eyes threatened to roll back in his head. That liquid pleasure magnified, heat and wet silk sliding, and he spat into his own hand and managed to get his fingers between Pagan’s to make a tight tunnel they could fuck into together. That melting surged in his belly so fast and the excitement, the raw _newness_ of it was rapidly overwhelming him.

“Slow down a little,” he murmured. “Draw it out, it’s too good… _fuck,_ it’s too good not to…”

“Like this?” Pagan rumbled out, rough and strained as he tightened his hand a little and stroked slower but firmer, but that didn’t help a bit, not when the head of his cock was nudging his every time and that milking, tantalizing pressure was _just right_ and he wasn’t going to last, it was ridiculous of him to think he could, not when it felt like this. No holding it back now.

“Can’t, I…” but before he could get anything else out Pagan jerked and swore and came hotly all over their joined fingers, like it had been surprised out of him. That was more than enough to push him over that edge too, the extra slickness of Pagan’s come sliding warm over him. Every muscle went rigid as they throbbed together, like liquid gold pulsing and spreading through his groin and then suffusing warm through the rest of him.

When he opened his eyes, Pagan still had his closed, head tucked against his. Ajay decided he liked his hard, lean face. It had taken him a while to make up his mind about it, but he decided he liked it, even liked his stupid makeup, the way his lashes fanned across his cheeks. Still flushed across his high cheekbones and with a tiny, contented smile, he was almost pretty. As he pulled away enough to tug his shirt off over his head to mop them up a little, he found Pagan watching him with slightly bleary eyes.

“I was wrong,” Pagan murmured drowsily. “This was an _excellent_ idea.” And he was right; even if this was all they had, all they ever got, Ajay would hold the good memory of it close. Of an afternoon of comfort and pleasure shared in a Kyrati forest, their foreheads pressed together amid the spicy smell of dead leaves. He thought of that, what it will be like to go back to the States and revisit that memory, to think of Pagan here and him there and eight thousand miles of ocean and mountains between them. What it would be like to hear on the news that he’d been assassinated, King Min dead in Kyrat’s ongoing civil war. How a month ago, a week ago, a day ago that wouldn’t have even pinged on his radar. Why would he care about some dead monarch in some shithole of a third-world country halfway around the world? He thought about that, thought about how he had felt Pagan’s chest rise and fall against his, felt his heart beating hard against his. Him offering his solid presence in the helicopter, rubbing his knee comfortingly. This man he barely knows. The only thing resembling family he has left.

“I’ll think about it, okay? Staying, I mean. I’ll think about it.”

Pagan chuckled warmly, but it might have been a little wistful too. “I do hope you’ll stay. To be completely frank, my boy…I need your help. Things here in Kyrat aren’t….well, they’re not going so well just at the moment. As you saw for yourself.”

And oh, dangerous, that was so dangerous, the warmth that blossomed in his chest at Pagan’s words. To be wanted, to be needed. It was always a flaw in him. It was what led to all that shit going down in that convenience store: _C’mon AJ, we really need you man. All you gotta do is be the lookout. Of course the gun’s not loaded, don’t be such a pussy, it’s just to scare the guy…_ It was that same warm feeling before all that happened, the _wanted_ feeling. But at the same time, Mom had needed him too. She had been so proud, hated being a burden, but as she grew sicker she’d had to admit that she needed his help. And that had straightened him right out.

On the surface, it seemed like it would be so stupid of him to get involved in Pagan’s…whatever, Pagan’s war, politics, whatever you call it when a country revolted and wanted you dead. Stupid, and naïve…way stupider than what they had just done. But Pagan had been Mom’s, had been hers in a way that had endured across decades and the wide gulf that had separated them.  And Mom had loved _him_ more than anything, had given up everything for her son. He hadn’t even known how much. She had kept him safe and then sent him back here to find Pagan, he understood that now.  Who had promptly killed a man for even _trying_ to harm him.  

When he thought it out, examined it in that light…well, that made him feel a little warm as well.

Good that the Golden Path didn’t actually succeed in their mission. Good for them, that was. It was their goddamn lucky day. Who knows what Pagan would have done, if he’d refused to go with them and they’d actually taken him against his will? Orbital strike? The thought was not nearly as disturbing as it should have been.

“You’re right,” he said in wonder. “I’ve been in Kyrat for less than a day, and my metric for fuckedup-ness is already seriously screwed,” as Pagan laughed that rich, deep laugh that he wanted to go on hearing. “But I don’t know what you need _me_ for, or what I could do to help you. I’m just a poor fuckin’ nobody from South Central.”

When he said that, Pagan’s face had sobered.

“Darling boy, your mother was wise not to spoil you, to keep certain things from you. So you might not believe me when I tell you that here in Kyrat, _you_ are the royalty, much more so than I. You are exactly who I need to unite this country. Ishwari’s heart, Mohan’s guts, honest and unpretentious and half-feral to boot. The people will _adore_ you, you’re perfect. You’re…” He looked away, tipped his head back to watch the pink-tinged clouds scud across a sky going gold with evening, and said nothing more.

“Not her, Pagan. _Not her._ And you’re sure as fuck not my, my stepdad or some shit,” as Pagan laughed again. He swallowed and went on, softly, seriously. “But maybe…maybe I can stay.  Maybe we can be something else.”

And that time it was Ajay who reached out to cross the gap, the gulf between them, reached and gently entwined their fingers.

 

End

 

***

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments/ideas/suggestions welcome!


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